We'll start with the fact the average university graduate has a vocabulary size of approximately 20,000 words. By comparison, it is thought Shakespeare had a vocabulary of 100,000 words, based on the fact he used 28,829 unique words in his entire body of work, which is more words than I apparently know. (Wow, here we are again!)

Adult native test-takers learn almost 1 new word a day until middle age

Adult test-taker vocabulary growth basically stops at middle age

And now back to the New York designer, coder and data scientist, who decided to look at the first 35,000 words used by Shakespeare, Herman Melville in Moby Dick, and 85 hip-hop artists. He compared the number of unique words each one used, and put them on a scale.

Sarah Western Balzer

Sarah Western Balzer grew up in Tampa, Florida, and lived in Washington, DC and New York before moving to London, where she lived for seven years. She now lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons. Her background is in the music industry, lifestyle relocation, and journalism.